What are the best quorum rules? A laboratory investigation
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What are the best quorum rules? A laboratory investigation Luís Aguiar‑Conraria1 · Pedro C. Magalhães2 · Christoph A. Vanberg3 Received: 23 August 2019 / Accepted: 23 October 2019 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Many political systems with direct democracy mechanisms have adopted rules preventing decisions from being made by simple majority rule. The device added most commonly to majority rule in national referendums is a quorum requirement. The two most common are participation and approval quorums. Such rules are responses to three major concerns: the legitimacy of the referendum outcome, its representativeness, and protection of minorities regarding issues that should demand a broad consensus. Guided by a pivotal voter model, we conduct a laboratory experiment to investigate the performances of different quorums in attaining such goals. We introduce two main innovations in relation to previous work on the topic. First, part of the electorate goes to the polls out of a sense of civic duty. Second, we test the performances of a different quorum, the rejection quorum, recently proposed in the literature. We conclude that, depending on the preferred criterion, either the approval or the rejection quorum is the best. Keywords Election design · Participation quorum · Approval quorum · Laboratory experiment JEL Classification C91 · D72 · D02
1 Introduction Many political systems wherein direct democracy mechanisms are employed also have adopted rules preventing decisions from being made by simple majority rule. “The two quorums—turnout requirement and approval requirement” (Qvortrup 2014, p. 130) are the devices added most commonly to majority rule in national, state/cantonal, and local Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1112 7-019-00749-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Luís Aguiar‑Conraria [email protected] 1
NIPE and Economics Department, University of Minho, Campus de Gualtar, Braga 4710‑057, Portugal
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Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Av. Prof. Aníbal de Bettencourt, 9, Lisbon, Portugal
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Alfred‑Weber‑Institut, University of Heidelberg, Bergheimer Str. 58, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany
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Public Choice
referendums and initiatives across the world. Under a turnout or participation quorum,1 for a particular measure to pass and the result to be considered binding, it is required not only that the measure gains the support of a majority of those who vote, but also that overall voter turnout surpasses a particular threshold (typically, one-half of the electorate). Conversely, under an approval quorum, those who vote in favor of a proposal must not only exceed those who oppose it, but also represent, at least, a predefined share of the electorate (commonly between 25 and 40%; sometimes more when the referendum concerns constitutional or sovereignty issues).2 The introduction of quorum rules ostensibly responds
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